


this was meant for me

by ByTheAngell (SomeLittleInfamy)



Series: Tumblr Prompts [53]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Betrayal, Gen, POV Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern | Sebastian Verlac, POV Jonathan Morgenstern
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-26 21:50:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18725665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomeLittleInfamy/pseuds/ByTheAngell
Summary: The sword comes to him, the only one left worthy of wielding it, and he feels it’s power and energy course through him as he turns to face a stunned Alec, noting the trepidation with which the Shadowhunters looks back up at him. What a sight he must be, Jonathan thinks idly: wings unfurled, eyes black, and the Morning Star sword glowing red in his grasp. The true picture of his destiny manifested. (a Jonathan POV of him getting, and using, the sword)





	this was meant for me

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: 1) Jonathan's thoughts and feels when Alec and Jace were totally ready to kill him to the point he flapped away. 2) His feels when he unleashes demons and meets Clary again.

 

He turns instinctively toward the arrow, not expecting the flash that immediately blinds his vision. Everything goes white, the ringing adding to his disorientation as he falls to the ground, hands above him in an attempt to protect himself from the movement he hears around him. Jace, surely, making his move.

Except he can’t. Jonathan feels the cold metal around his wrists, handcuffed so he can’t attack but unable to _be_ attacked in turn despite being entirely vulnerable. Not unless they want to harm their precious friend.

Once more he owes his life to Clary. Jonathan closes his eyes and focuses inward - the bond is still in tact. She’s doing fine, wherever she is. He doesn’t feel so much as a scratch on himself from her, which isn’t surprising. If he had any doubts he would’ve taken the sword for himself but he knows it’s safe in his sister’s more than capable hands.

A second set of footsteps approach, the archer’s, and then Jace is gone and Alec takes his place.

“Jonathan Morgenstern, by order of the Clave, you’ve been sentenced to death as soon as Clary’s free of you.”

Something is wrong. He can sense concern through his bond with Clary, hesitation and confusion stronger than any he experienced since she gave herself over to his side completely. With Jace and Isabelle against her if she falters... if she fails…

She won’t. She can’t. He needs her, and with Alec ready to take his life at any second he feels truly vulnerable for the first time since his resurrection. Panic and fear are not emotions he’s used to experiencing but he feels them both now and they’re overwhelming. He has to wonder how much of it is Clary and how much of it is himself, but as much as he hates those feelings he’s suddenly unwilling to lose them.

Because losing those intrusive emotions means losing her, too.

“CLARY!” He calls out with every ounce of strength he has left. He needs to see her, to know she’s okay. He needs her.

Jonathan feels the searing pain on his right shoulder blade at the exact moment his sister’s scream echoes through the trees. Next comes the flare of magic - _their magic_ \- beneath his skin like an electric current, attempting to fight back against that which threatens it.

“ _Jonathan!”_ As the sound of his own name reaches him Jonathan’s face contorts in anguish that, unknown to him, mimics Clary’s own. She sounds so fragile, so lost, so _scared_.

“Clary!” The pain through his shoulder blade is excruciating. She’s hurt. She’s hurt and she’s calling out for him even as they try to tear them apart, and there’s nothing he can do to save her. He’s her older brother, he should be there to protect her, but instead he’s helpless to do anything but feel her being ripped away from him. He can sense the fade of their connection, sees flashes of red and edom. Just like that their connection is gone….

… and so is anything good and light and angelic that she brought into his life.  

There’s a shifting behind him which causes Jonathan to react instinctively. Wings sprout from his back - defending him where his bound hands cannot - sending Alec sprawling backwards. Jonathan breaks the cuffs that hold him and reaches out a hand, calling to the one thing he has left to his name in this world.

“What the hell…” Alec mutters.

The sword comes to him, the only one left worthy of wielding it, and he feels it’s power and energy course through him as he turns to face a stunned Alec, noting the trepidation with which the Shadowhunters looks back up at him. What a sight he must be, Jonathan thinks idly: wings unfurled, eyes black, and the Morning Star sword glowing red in his grasp. The true picture of his destiny manifested.

“Apparently being tethered to my sister was holding me back.” Jonathan thought he needed Clary. He thought his sister’s love and acceptance would make him stronger, make him whole again, but he was wrong… or so he tries to convince himself. All Clary ever did was make him vulnerable. He once thought that she was only the weakness of the Shadowhunters they fought, but he made the mistake of allowing her to become his as well. He just couldn’t see it before.

He can see it now, though; everything is so much clearer now.  
  
“The Clave will never stop hunting you.” Jonathan wants to laugh at the words out of Alec’s mouth. He could kill him if he wanted to, right then and there, but it would be a waste of time and effort, and a poor use of the Morning Star. He has more important things to do than worry about this one boy and his empty threats.   
  
“They can’t hunt me if they’re already dead.” Jonathan gives Alec a final look - a self-satisfied smirk so that he _knows_ Jonathan is choosing to live him behind in one piece, just to remind Alec he’s that insignificant in the grand scheme of what’s about to happen.

Jonathan looks up and pushes himself off the ground, the wind in his face more freeing than anything he’s felt in his entire life. Everything is falling into place. He has the sword. He’s embraced his true self as well as the demonic power within him that his father gifted him so long ago. But the Shadowhunters? They took the last thing he needed for his vision to be perfect.

They took his sister from him, and for that, they’re going to pay.

\---

Jonathan wastes no time in felling the demon towers in Alicante. Every moment that passes is another the Shadowhunters have to get in his way again, to try and put an end to everything he worked so hard to achieve. He’s spent enough time plotting to make sure he has everything he needs lined up for the moment the blade was in his possession.

This is it. This is the moment it all comes together.

Every action Jonathan makes is driven by pure instinct and the belief that this is the singular purpose he’s fated for. It was never Clary or Jace who was meant to bring honor back to the Morgenstern name, their father had been wrong about. It was him. It’s always been him.

Jonathan raises the sword and cuts through the sky itself, a slice of fire bleeding through the swirling clouds above. And then, just as he pictured in the moment his bond with Clary severed, he sees the winged demons flood through the breach, set free from their prison. He did it. After so many years in Edom kept from his true birthright, after numerous setbacks during his time on Earth, it’s finally done.

And it’s beautiful.

He doesn’t bother to look away at the sound of footsteps behind him, not even at the sound of Clary’s voice.

“Jonathan! What happened to you?”

Doesn’t she know? Doesn’t she see that the very bond that made her so endearingly merciless was the same one that made him even the slightest bit sympathetic? What _happened_ to him, she must realize, is that without her influence there’s nothing to stop him from giving in to his darkest impulses, his deepest desires.

Without her there’s nothing stopping him from becoming the demon they’re all so quick to view him as.   
  
“You wanted a monster, here I am.” He turns slowly, wishing he could be surprised that she came to stop him. He allows a moment of hope that she simply played along with Jace and the others to get back to him and now that she sees the power the Morning Star could bring the both of them she’ll come running back to take her rightful place by his side, just like they planned.

“Please, stop this.” Clary pleads, and he can hear the weakness behind the words immediately. Jonathan mourns the loss of what she could’ve been and buries the last bit of hope he had left.

“There. Is. No. Stopping. This.” He pauses after every word, making sure she understands, driving the point home with the finality of every syllable. “Every demon you banish ends up on the other side of that rift, ready to come back again, and again, and again. Until everybody in this city is dead!” The Clave, the Shadowhunters, they would all have him dead. Funny how a life seems to matter so much more when it’s your own. For them to cleanse the world of him would’ve been justice. So why is his desire to cleanse the world of them so unacceptable in turn?

“That includes Clary,” Jace points out, causing Jonathan to realize how desperate he must truly be. A minute ago that might’ve made a difference: when Jonathan thought there was a chance that his love for her could still be returned, that there was any possibility no matter how slight of him getting back the ruthless sister who was ready to rule the world at his side. But now?

“I know that the love you felt for me, that the love you still feel, is real. You told me you wanted to be better. To be _good_. Jonathan, please… Please.” Clary’s words are spoken over the ambient sounds of screams, of cannon fire and bursts of exploding concrete.

She isn’t wrong. He did want to be better, to be good - _for her_. But she doesn’t believe in him or his vision, she only wants him to stop long enough for her to turn on him again the way she had in Paris with that Shadowhunter and in New York when she locked him in that underground cell.

He wants to believe that she cares but he can’t afford to make the same mistake a third time, not after he’s already come so far.

“It doesn’t matter what I do.” His voice is strained and he mentally curses the swell of emotions that well up within him. Jonathan holds out the sword and it turns to dust and ash in his grip. It served its purpose, it opened the rift, and now that it’s destroyed that action cannot be undone. He does care - Clary’s right about that part too - which makes the fate he seals for her with the loss of the sword hurt that much more. It breaks him to do, but if her only goal is to stop him then she has to die along with the rest of them.

“ _YOU WILL NEVER LOVE ME BACK_!” Jonathan needs her to know that he still loves her. That if only she could’ve loved him back things would be different and he wouldn’t have to hurt her this way. Her fate here is her own doing.

He also needs to leave. He can’t look at her a second longer without shattering and he doesn’t want to be here the moment the city collapses around her, or one of the many demons flying overhead single out the angel blood coursing through her veins as their next target.

Jonathan launches himself upward into the chaos of the sky above, his wings carrying him toward the breach - toward Edom - and does his best not to look back.

**Author's Note:**

> ( Find me on [Tumblr](http://bytheangell.tumblr.com) and also on [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/By_The_Angell) while we all hang out waiting for someone to #SaveShadowhunters ! <3)


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